Spring cleaning

I was standing in line in front of the container truck-sized skip designated for waste metal. Each Sunday, the local council puts three of these huge skips — one for wood, one for metal and one for gardening refuse — on one of its old storage sites, calls it a civic amenity centre and invites householders to bring along recycling waste that is too bulky for the fortnightly collection. It also supplies a static dustcart for rubble and cardboard and three workers to supervise, assist and keep an eye out that nobody abuses the service by sneaking in old tyres, tins of paint or asbestos.

Ten years ago, we would have all been filling a trolley at the garden centre or DIY megastore on Sunday afternoon. In today’s leaner times, here we all are queuing to get rid of all the tat we filled our houses with during the fat years, even volunteering to break it up ourselves into constituent parts for shipping back to China, where no doubt it will be remoulded into other consumables and sent back in time for the next economic upswing.